The number of COVID-19 fatalities in Indonesia as of Wednesday afternoon (18 March) reached 19. That dramatic increase was confirmed by the country’s Health Ministry Disease Control and Prevention Director-General Achmad Yurianto at the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB).
He added that the highest number of fatalities in one city had been confirmed in Jakarta at 12 deaths, followed by Central Java with two, while Banten, Bali, West Java, East Java, and North Sumatra each reported one fatality from COVID-19.
“This figure jumped dramatically from the government’s previous report of 5 fatalities, so now there are 19 fatalities. This is because several hospitals had failed to submit their fatality reports from 12 to 17 March and the government only managed to obtain the updated data on Wednesday morning,” he said.
Indonesia also reported 55 new confirmed cases of infection on Wednesday, with Mr Yurianto saying that most of them were reported in Jakarta with 30 infection cases, followed by West Java with 12 cases, Banten with four cases, and Central Java with two cases.
Yogyakarta, North Sumatra, Lampung, Riau, and East Kalimantan have confirmed one new COVID-19 case each while independent epidemiology tests found two positive cases.
“Despite the increasing number of confirmed cases, we can also confirm that 11 people have recovered from the disease and hospitals have allowed them to go home,” noted Mr Yurianto.
As reported by local media KataData which quoted from Worldometers, Indonesia is currently the country with the highest COVID-19 death toll in Southeast Asia. The second is the Philippines with a total of 202 infections and 17 fatalities. Next is Malaysia which has the highest number of cases in Southeast Asia, but the number of fatalities remain at two.